Photo “Powerpoint Karaoke” by Flickr user rmlowe. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Via Audrey Rogers of Feminist Law Professors and others

As described at Jezebel.com:  “ Duke [University]  is in an uproar about a highly detailed “fuck list” that a recent female graduate made — in PowerPoint, complete with penis-size evaluations and dirty-talk transcripts.  Upon graduating, the author decided to pass on the wisdom she had learned, in thesis format. The subject: “An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal academics.” The thirteen subjects are each preceded by a tableau of photos of the men, most of which seem to be pulled from Facebook and athletic action shots.”   

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She didn’t intend for the report to go “viral” on the Internet, but did e-mail it to 3 friends. Her partners willingly engaged in sex with her, but not to have the details of their encounters rated and published. The case raises interesting and troubling questions over power, sexual freedom, and invasion of privacy.

She said it here.

Aside from Roger’s post and a one-liner in an RHReality Check roundup there hasn’t been much discussion of the event in the 300 or so progressive-political, feminist, and tech/nerd blogs in my newsreader. Which in itself isn’t terrifically surprising — when you think about it except for the author’s sex it sounds like the usual private college humor that escaped into the wild.

It seems to be wildly popular on the more lad-oriented side of the internet. For instance I stumbled across a new-to-me trainspotting-style trivia blog, Anorak.co.uk, which reposted Owen’s powerpoint slides. Their introduction to the slides is fairly straight and uneventful, but they used the headline “Karen Owen’s Duke University Fuck List In Full With Photos (NSFW): When Feminism Bites Back.”

Some commenters were fairly predictably negative

I kept wondering if her pussy smelled bad. Did she go bareback? I love a woman who acts like a slut. I like to watch.

[and]

sounds like a slut looking for attention. this is why us college athletes know which girls to sleep with, and which ones not to sleep with.

But another, Cheryl, gets a little closer to the mark

This is humorous. Most sports jocks in college do think they are the cocks of the walk and brag of their conquests.

Somewhat like Cheryl, above, I think the actual incident falls into the same category as similar stunts by boorish young men: poor judgment, an unfair outing of one’s sex partners without their consent, and momentary embarrassment for the author. And 13 is a little on the high side but still well within the normal range of partners over four years for both college-age men and women. So no big deal there, and anyone who thinks this makes her a “slut” needs to get out more often.

What I don’t get is how this is supposed to represent “feminism biting back.” At best feminism has created an environment where women can be sexually active, let alone admit it, fear of being stoned to death in the village square. At best feminism has created an environment where women can be financially, legally, socially, and politically independent enough not to lock down their laps (like that’s any easier women than it would be for men) until one guy offers to shoulder her complete financial dependence. But that’s just the environment we feminism has helped create — but inside that environment her actions themselves don’t seem either particularly feminist or non-feminist.

Otherwise it just sounds like minus the blow up 14 Duke students, one young woman and 13 young men, had some very enjoyable experiences in college. Without feminism it might only have been 2, with 12 others left wishing it could have been them… or maybe even never knowing what they’d missed at all… or, in the bad-old days before feminism, they’d have found “outlets” in one of the illegal brothels that once could be found on the “wrong side of the tracks” in nearly all college towns. Including Duke. All in all I think those options would bite worse than this.